


Five Times Someone Fell Asleep

by miera



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: 5 Things, F/M, Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miera/pseuds/miera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times either Chris or Len fell asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Someone Fell Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> When stuck, try a 5 Things fic?

Most of the time, Len McCoy could forget he was in space. _Enterprise_ was a large enough ship that he usually could block out the fact that he was inside a metal can flying through a vacuum, along with all the myriad tiny problems that could result in sudden and painful death.

The shuttlepods were another story.

This backwater Federation planet had some quirk in its ionosphere that the meant the transporters weren't safe. Of course, McCoy didn't think they were safe to begin with, but an hour-long, bumpy shuttle ride was harder on his anxiety than a ten second transporter trip.

He clenched his hands into tighter fists and concentrated on his breathing and not snapping at Sulu, who was doing his best to fly this contraption as smoothly as possible. Even if every jolt made his heart pound with fear. Even if at any moment they could hit an air pocket that strained the hull and caused a breach that sucked all the oxygen from the shuttlepod. Even if these were his last moments alive.

This will be over soon, he reminded himself. He'd be back on the relative safety of _Enterprise_ , with another Federation planet safe from further epidemics of Pandorian hemorrhagic fever. The inoculation process was in full swing when they left the surface, the local doctors having grasped the basic concept fairly quickly. Now Len and his head nurse could get back to dealing with freak engineering accidents and whatever new substance on the hermetically sealed spaceship Jim Kirk had developed an allergy to now.

Len looked across the shuttlepod. Christine Chapel was sitting against the wall, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open slightly.

She was asleep. Unbelievable. He was holding on for dear life and she was totally out.

It was even more unfair that she managed to look completely proper while asleep. If he by some miracle managed to nod off in here, he'd end up sprawled all over the bench. His ex-wife had complained more than once about him falling all over the place and hogging the bed.

Not Chapel, though. Her arms were in her lap, her hands folded together demurely. She made jokes sometimes about her grandmother's etiquette lessons. The first time he'd spoken to her beyond discussing work matters was a crack she made about growing up in the South; it was something they had in common. It was nice to feel like there was at least one other person on _Enterprise_ he could talk to besides Jim. As a friend.

His eyes flickered down to note that her ankles – which were at the end of her very long and very shapely legs – were also decorously crossed.

 _Friend, my ass,_ he thought to himself ruefully. He did his best to keep his eyes to himself for the rest of the flight, though the temptation got the better of him more than once.

  
*~*~*~*~*

Denaris was a mess. Not that she had gotten to see much of it. But judging from what was happening inside the hospital, the situation outside was dire. The government was fighting back against a rebel force trying to seize the capital, and the single hospital in the city was overwhelmed.

Once, during the afternoon, they heard what sounded like weapons fire. Christine had glanced instinctively at McCoy, who looked back at her for a moment in mutual alarm. _Enterprise_ had responded to the distress call of the Denarin government, and the Captain and Commander Spock were supposed to be trying to negotiate a cease-fire. Chris hadn't had time to learn what was going on, not with the injured and dying flooding the hospital.

Len had a look on his face that said pretty much everything she was thinking. I didn't come down here to be a soldier, will _Enterprise_ be able to beam us out of here and what about all these people?

But he was trying to save the arm of a Denarin woman and there wasn't time to hesitate. They had both focused back on their task swiftly. Chris had spent another hour listening anxiously for signs that the hospital had been breached, but they never came and eventually the rush of triaging the injured pushed the fear from her mind.

There were more patients, a never-ending line of them, but McCoy had consumed the maximum safe number of stimulants in the last 24 hours and was starting to crash. M'Benga helped Christine force their boss away from the surgery, with strict admonishments that she was to get some rest herself. She led McCoy to a room full of cots where the medical personnel were sleeping in short shifts.

Except there were no open cots.

Once he was no longer looking at people actively bleeding, McCoy had quieted and she could feel him swaying with fatigue behind her. There wasn't much other choice, so she headed for the wall and snagged a blanket and sat down, tugging him to the floor alongside her. At least she was wearing trousers for this mission. Len folded his arms across his chest and mumbled something that sounded like, "Wake me in ten." Sure, that was going to happen. He was going to be out for a good six hours with the stimulants leaving his system. A moment later, his body sagged sideways into her shoulder.

Figuring he needed rest more than she did, Christine guided him so that his head was in her lap. If she wasn't so damned exhausted she would have been blushing about having her occasionally crusty but fiercely loyal boss asleep in her arms, but as it was she tossed the blanket over them both haphazardly and got as comfortable as she could against the wall. Despite a lot of people complaining about his bedside manner, she liked working with McCoy. He respected his staff and expected the best from them, and she liked the challenge. And truth be told, she rather enjoyed his bluntness. It was a relief to know where she stood with him rather than having to guess what he might be thinking all the time.

For instance, his expression even asleep was worried, his forehead crumpled up and his jaw tight. She ran her fingers across his face, trying to soothe him out of instinct. Len shifted, almost snuggling into her, and without intending to, her hand ended up in his hair.

All right, she could admit to herself, if nobody else, the bluntness wasn't the only thing she found appealing about her boss. She threaded her fingers through his hair absently, the motion lulling her until she fell asleep herself.

  
*~*~*~*~*

The monitor beeped quietly, indicating her heart rate and respiration were increasing slightly. Len had been hovering not far from the biobed for a while, waiting and reviewing every detail over and over. Rationally he knew there was nothing else he could have done, that everyone had done everything that was possible, but the sight of Christine lying in a biobed looking fragile provoked a decidedly irrational response in him.

Her eyes began to flutter open. She blinked up at him in confusion for a long moment, then her mouth moved like she was trying to say, "Len?"

He took what felt like his first deep breath in hours. She wasn't out of the woods entirely, but she was out of the coma and she recognized him. That was a start.

He leaned over her, his hand finding hers and grasping her fingers against the blanket at her side. "You're in Sickbay, Chris. You were hurt in an explosion. Do you remember?"

She frowned and then shook her head a little, wincing as she strained the healing muscles in her back.

"It's all right. You took a blow to the head so you may have some moderate memory loss. We fixed the damage but you've been out for nearly twelve hours." He rattled off her vitals out of habit, because reporting on a patient when he was talking to Chris in Sickbay was ingrained, even though this time she was the patient. But he could see her relaxing, absorbing the information and slowly, through the haze of the painkillers and the disorientation of her injury, grasping that her condition was serious but the worst was over.

"I need to keep you here for another twenty-four hours for observation, just to be sure. Do you need anything?" Strictly speaking his job description didn't involve waiting on patients hand and foot, but this was Christine, his head nurse, his friend. The woman he was not-so-secretly infatuated with. He'd promised whatever deities might be listening that if she survived this, he wouldn't keep hesitating, no matter how terrified he was. He was going admit what he was feeling and ask her out. Regardless of the potential consequences.

Now wasn't the time, of course.

Chris was already blinking heavily. She mumbled something but he couldn't make it out. Her fingers squeezed around his for a moment, though, before she drifted off to sleep.

He stood there for a while, unable to make himself leave her side right away. He kept hold of her hand, his thumb brushing against the back of her knuckles gently, watching her sleep.

*~*~*~*~*

She stifled the urge to burst into giggles, but it was close. That she was even close to giggling in the first place was an indicator of how stressed out this date had made her.

Len's attitude hadn't helped. When he approached her after a shift one day, he'd looked like he was about to deliver some horrible news. She'd actually braced an arm against the chair, thinking something awful had happened back on Earth that he had to tell her about.

So him blurting out that he cared about her as more than a friend and thought they should go on a real date had stunned her so badly, she hadn't spoken for a full minute. Which only made him glower more.

She had started to laugh then. But it hadn't been so funny earlier tonight while she was agonizing over what to wear to a private meal in her commanding officer's quarters that needed to appear to anyone else like two coworkers talking but really was the first "first date" she'd gone on in nearly five years. With a man who was her boss, her friend, and who she'd had a crush on for well over a year.

Her only comfort had been that Len looked as nervous as she felt when she arrived. Thankfully they got through dinner by talking about work and ship gossip and both of them had relaxed marginally.

After the strawberry cheesecake he'd clearly gotten just for her, they'd talked. They both agreed they would take this slowly. Their friendship and working relationship were valuable. Both of them had been badly hurt. It made sense not to rush into anything. Privately her hormones vehemently disagreed with that last part, especially since the black, button-down shirt Len was wearing kept taunting her with images of ripping it open and off of him. But the last thing she wanted was to end up hurting him, even unintentionally, so going slowly was probably for the best.

And cuddling on his couch watching an old vid was nice, really. Despite her other friends on board, she didn't get to touch people in a casual manner much. Len was warm and big and solid and her head found its way to his shoulder early on. It felt far more comfortable than she would have expected.

Possibly too comfortable, because Len was now indisputably asleep. His head had fallen back against the couch and his legs were sagging apart as he drifted off. Apparently he hadn't found the movie very engaging.

He shifted, trying to get more comfortable, and his arm tightened around her, tugging her closer. She was familiar with this habit of his, at least. Chris smothered her urge to laugh and debated what to do. Probably she should slip away and let him sleep, but if she just left, what would he think when he woke up?

A wicked impulse overcame her and she stretched up a little and blew a warm stream of air against his neck. He twitched, but didn't open his eyes. Figuring there was no need to hold back now, Chris moved even closer and began to nibble lightly at his ear.

"Nnnff..." His arm tightened even more but his eyes opened as he woke up. "Chris?"

Her tongue flicked out and teased his earlobe once before she pulled back. He was looking down at her, slightly rumpled and confused, and the temptation was too much to resist. She leaned in and kissed him.

God Almighty, the man could kiss even half-asleep, which made her wonder what it would be like when he was completely awake. His lips were full and surprisingly soft and he cradled her body against his as he explored her lips and then slowly deepened the kiss and delved into her mouth gently. Her hand crept up to cradle the side of his face, feeling the hint of stubble against her palm as she kissed him back just as thoroughly.

When the kiss ended she looked up at him. He was still a bit dazed, although the hungry look in his eyes made her shiver. But that didn't mean she couldn't tease him a little. "Hi."

"Hi."

"You fell asleep on me."

He blushed. "Sorry. Long day."

She smiled and brushed her lips lightly against his. He followed her mouth, like he didn't want her to pull away so soon, but she trailed her fingertips lightly down his chest as she stood up. "I should go, let you get some rest."

"Yeah, like that'll happen now," he muttered under his breath, standing up to walk her to the door, like the gentleman he was.

She couldn’t help giggling that time.

*~*~*~*~*

He loved Jim like a brother, he really did, but the man was tremendously inconvenient. Despite all these years of attempts, Len still wasn't very good and telling him no. Which was why it was now much too late in the evening for him to stop by and see Christine. They both had to be on shift early tomorrow. Damn it.

Thankfully, Chris was a fairly forgiving woman, and she knew Jim Kirk's persuasive abilities first hand, having been talked more than once into letting the Captain out of Sickbay when he shouldn't have been. It was less that Len was worried about her being upset and more that he just really wanted to see her. Which was clingy and pathetic, because she spent more than half her nights in his quarters and was he that needy that going three days without spending time with her off-duty made him this cranky?

Sighing, he went directly to his quarters, rather than opening the temptation of going past hers first. Be an adult, he admonished himself sternly. Things are going well. Don't screw it up by pressuring her.

He took three steps into his quarters and stopped cold. Chris was asleep in his bed. She'd clearly been reading something on a padd, because it was lying alongside her on the mattress. But her eyes were closed and she was curled up into a ball the way she always did when she fell asleep.

For a long moment he couldn't move. The surprise was less potent than the fact that Christine was lying there in his bed, waiting for him even though he'd warned her he might not get back until late, looking utterly at home and peaceful. His heart thudded almost painfully in his chest, the hope he'd been trying to keep under control for months as their relationship progressed hitting him full force.

He made himself move, stripping down to his boxers and washing up before dimming the lights and sliding into bed behind her. He brushed a kiss against her shoulder and she stirred. "Len?"

"Mmm. It's late. Go back to sleep."

She mumbled, her arm covering his around her waist, her fingers tangling with his as he spooned up behind her. She fell back to sleep almost immediately, but he stayed still, propped up on one elbow and watching her for a few minutes in the faint starlight. Finally he leaned over and whispered words in her ear he hadn't been sure he'd ever say to anyone but his daughter again.

In the morning, he vowed, he'd screw up the courage to say them when Christine was awake.


End file.
